Monday, April 25, 2005

New HRW Report

Human Rights Watch have called for "a special prosecutor to investigate the culpability of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and ex-CIA Director George Tenet in cases of detainee torture and abuse," in a report issued just prior to the first anniversary of the torture at Abu Ghraib prison coming to light.

On another front, which seems to have long since left the public arena, the Bush administration were criticised for leaking the identity of a CIA agent, Valerie Plame Wilson, the allegation at the time being that the leak was a malicious act arising in response to the administration's frustration at criticism by the agent's diplomat spouse, Joe Wilson.

A special prosecutor has been looking into the circumstances surrounding the leak and John Dean has an update on the investigation over at Findlaw. There are lots of interesting aspects of this case but the one Dean focusses on is the involvement of two journalists with an apparently peripheral involvement in the leak and the special prosecutor's attempts to get them to divulge sources to a grand jury. There is the strong framework of an investigative thriller in all this, when the story finally comes to be told.

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